Thursday, January 1, 2009

Meet Bill Felker

I've kept a journal since April of
1957, and my shed outside is full of all those words. My journal
making and bookbinding is a spinoff from the practice of journaling.
I enjoy making things that I would like to use myself, but I also
project and fantasize uses and people onto the things I make. So if
you buy something of mine that you like, I somehow had you in mind
when I made it. And so I made it especially for you.

On all my book fliers, I have the
statement: “Each book has a mission for its binder, its author and
its reader. Words conform to the shape of their place in the same way
that place is shaped by words and vision. The book reader completes
and joins the regimen of both the book maker and the book writer,
each having a private purpose to define and pursue a separate
discipline.”

This “artist’s statement” comes
from the whole process of binding/writing/reading. It tells something
of my experience with keeping notes, saving notes, and sharing notes.
The practice of book binding exemplifies the rhythm that can also
exist in the practice of writing or the practice of reading. It is in
the action of the practice itself that the real stuff of mind and
matter come together. The practice is the walk and the talk.